if you were a magic card i'd pick you
by smileyfacebabe
Summary: Post s02, ignoring s03. The Sheriff finds eight teenagers, a twenty one year old and a supposedly dead creepy (sassy) uncle in his living room playing cards. This is the journey on how it's all Stiles' (and Derek's, Stiles argues) fault that they're there.


Alright, so I've been gone for an eon or eight but I like Teen Wolf and so I wrote Teen Wolf fanficiton and if anyone doesn't like it they can suck it. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even a box of Cards Against Humanity, which breaks my fucking heart, seriously.

* * *

It started, surprisingly enough, with Derek. Stiles wouldn't have put his money on that even if it'd been the only option available, to be quite honest, because while Derek was still a person (the expression on Derek's face when he had said the word 'abomination' and not meant werewolves in general had cemented that feeling; the person-y feeling that Derek now gave off despite his best impersonation of a feral cat who lived out of a dumpster) Derek wasn't the kind of person who gave off the vibe that he was too into shooter games. So when Derek came through Stiles' window barely two weeks after the warehouse catastrophe the last thing that the teenager expected out of the werewolf's mouth was, "Is that the new map pack?"

Stiles paused the video he had been studying and turned to look (r.e. _gape like a floundering fish_) at the trespassing werewolf (and wasn't that ironic, considering the first thing the man had ever said to them, Jesus Christ, Stiles' _life_.) with something akin to horror.

Before Stiles' could answer Derek was hovering over his shoulder, finger dragging over the laptop touch pad as he scanned the webpage Stiles' had been messing around on for the good part of ten minutes while the map pack in question downloaded downstairs.

"You don't play Black Ops," Stiles ended blurting. It somehow came out as a question.

Derek snorted. "I've probably been playing Black Ops longer than you, thanks. Fuck, there's a Tommy gun?"

Part of Stiles wanted to scream. How was this his life again, honestly, a werewolf was practically vibrating with excitement while looming over him because of a map pack that allowed you to kill zombies in the setting of 1950's Alcatraz. It _didn't make sense_. But he was tired and still aching from the beating two weeks ago and that was what he would blame this on later, if anyone ever asked, because he hurt and was lonely and not because for the first time Derek looked like someone Stiles could actually _like_ and wasn't that incredible, honestly, his _life_, ladies and gentlemen, ugh.

"I've got two controllers downstairs and my dad shouldn't be home until five. Want to give it a shot for yourself?"

And that was how this whole mess started. Stiles laid equal blame on Derek's shoulders, however, because if he hadn't said yes then they probably wouldn't have ended up where they did.

Nearly a week after the run through of the new map pack (_with hellhound things, how fucking cool was that Derek, Jesus fuck, man_) Stiles turned around at school to find Isaac trembling at his shoulder, eyes wide, lips pursed, and a hunched set to his shoulders that Stiles had thought vanished along with his humanity. Stiles stared at him wordlessly for a second before turning around and going back to his disorganized locker. _Ignore him,_ he told himself mentally. _There is a bruise the size of Russia on your ribcage because of an old hateful man who beat you and this is not your problem anymore, ignore him. _

"You've been spending too much time with Derek," his mouth said, completely bypassing his resolve to ignore the teenage werewolf trying to bore holes in the back of his head. "You're beginning to lurk and scowl and generally be very creepy on the campus of the high school much too well for someone with such bright curly hair. But hey, at least you actually go to this school, right?"

"Have you seen Boyd or Erica?"

Stiles' heart stuttered and his stomach lurched. For a short infinitive moment he could feel a boot connect to his ribcage and his fingers flinched with remembered electricity. He swallowed and pressed the phantom pains away purposefully. He turned to look at Isaac and found the boy wincing, his mouth twisted down and his eyes locking onto the last yellow green tint that was all that was left of his battle wounds from that night.

"They're still missing," he said. He didn't mean to, but his mouth hardly ever checked in with his brain anymore. That was a relationship that was off and on more than any celebrity pair that he'd ever cared about (which totaled to, like, three pairs, tops, okay, that was a completely healthy amount, _Scott_, jeez) and apparently today they were off. Fabulous.

Isaac looked sad and small and- oh _fuck it_. Stiles whirled back around, shoved his chemistry book back in the locker and then hauled his calculus book out of his backpack, leaving both in there while he swung his backpack over his shoulder. The hallway was thinning out for bored teenagers when Stiles slammed the locker door shut, whirled around and grabbed Isaac by the fabric of his shirt.

"What the hell, Stiles," he sputtered. He didn't fight the pull, though, which was good. Stiles really didn't think he would have been able to pull Isaac along, even before the werewolf strength had been added in like Chemical X to his system. "Where the hell are we going, you can't just-"

"We're going to find Erica and Boyd," Stiles said, easy as breathing. "Scott's going to stay in class because he has a quiz in math, but we are going to find Erica and Boyd, right now. Got any problems with that?"

Stiles didn't have to look back to know Isaac was scowling at him, looking more like a kicked puppy than anything else. Or maybe it was just that everyone's scowls kind of seemed tame compared to Derek's scowl, which was like a thundercloud had sex with a very unimpressed bear. (His dad had a good scowl too, but that might have just been the Pavlovian conditioning from his childhood coming into play, Stiles' wasn't sure.) Stiles glanced back just to make sure, grinning a little bit manically when he was right. He liked being right.

Isaac pulled back a little at Stiles' grin, digging in his feet. The hallway was almost empty by then. They were going to get caught soon if they didn't hurry up. Stiles dug his nails into Isaac's shirt like that would help, hauling him a little more intently toward the parking lot.

"Oh no, wolf boy, you're coming with me. Not all of us have super human strength and in the case of broken bones yours will heal much faster than mine. Stop being such a wuss."

It took six hours, three broken bones, a small case of breaking and entering into Erica's house and nineteen tries at her phone's username and password before the pair were found. Stiles' would have been impressed if he hadn't needed to call in the cops on a (fake) emergency 911 call into the building directly next to the warehouse were the pair were being held as a distraction. The highlight of the fiasco was that Stiles' didn't get so much a splinter during the entire time. The lowlight (was that such a thing? Or was it referred to as a low point? That didn't make any sense…) was that by the time they had driven all over God's green ass Earth, starting at Erica's phones' last known point and then going out from there, Stiles' was out of gas, his phone was dead, he was lost as fuck, and he was _starving_.

"In hindsight, we probably should have called Derek," he admitted. Isaac snorted quietly from the passenger seat. He had asked if there were going to call Derek before they had even left the high school's campus, but Stiles had thought that he could find Erica and Boyd without the sourwolf's help (which he had, thank you very fucking much). He just hadn't thought it would take _six and a half hours_.

"Shut up, Isaac," Stiles said, without much heat. "Anyone remember how far back that gas station/diner was?"

Erica, who was pale and shaky and hunched in on herself with a look Stiles' had hoped to never see on her face again, _ever_, made a small noise of disgust. Boyd sort of groaned, or groaned as much as anyone could with a broken jaw. It sounded kind of like he was imitating the cows on the Secret Cow Level of Diablo II, Stiles thought distractedly, as he turned around to head back to the diner.

"We're going to get food poisoning," Isaac said quietly.

"Do you have a better plan than going to that diner and stealing their power until my phone works again? Because if so, I would love to hear it."

They spent the better part of an hour in the corner booth of the shitty middle of fucking nowhere diner while his phone charged enough to last them the trip home. Isaac ordered a burger while Erica and Boyd ordered enough fries for five people, between the two of them. Stiles' ordered pancakes and they all drank shitty diner coffee. They didn't speak much, if you didn't count the way Stiles' rambled on about the homework Erica and Boyd had missed in their three week absence. But Erica laughed quietly toward the end of Stiles' tale about their epic fucking quest to hunt their werewolf asses down and Boyd's jaw wasn't broken by the time they paid and piled back in Jeep, fully filled up again, so Stiles counted it a win. He counted it a double win when no angered alphas stormed the parking lot after their wayward prisoners, though that didn't stop Stiles from worrying about that possibility all the way home.

It wasn't until he was sprawled across his bed that he actually did contact Derek. _Saved your betas_, he typed out with one hand. The screen hadn't even locked before the answering text came in, which Stiles found hilarious. Weeks, literally, of trying to get Derek to _answer his fucking phone_, were finally paying off. Thank fuck.

**you're joking**

_Am not_, he texted back. He rolled on his back, holding the phone above his head and pushing out the keyboard to speed up the process. His limbs felt like lead, but he managed to type out, _You owe me gas money, dammit, they were in the middle of some bunk ass city down south_ before the phone slipped out of his grasp and landed on his face. He sighed heavily, but sent the message anyway.

Ten minutes later the phone buzzed, waking him up out of his doze. He groaned, the noise slipping into a sort of chuckling snort when he read the message.

i**saac says you aren't lying**

_Thanks for the trust, asshole. It really warms my heart, knowing that you've put such weight on me. Really_.

If he stayed up for two hours, waiting for a text back for that bit of smart assery, Stiles would deny it until the day he died. He did, however, wake up the next morning to find sixty bucks tucked under the corner of his laptop, along with a post it note that read "Thank you" in a crooked looping handwriting that had to be Derek's own. And maybe that was the moment it started, instead; the moment wherein he put the post it note in his desk drawer rather than throwing it away, because fuck if Stiles was getting rid of this, this _physical evidence_ that Derek Hale could be _polite_.

After that it wasn't a hard pattern to fall into. He helped Erica and Boyd get caught back up with school and when Lydia stormed over to their lunch table, a notebook full of werewolf facts she had gathered from performing tests on Jackson (and damn did Stiles wish he had been there to see those happen first hand) he answered all of her remaining questions to the best of his ability. Twice a week, like clockwork, Derek came over and they slaughtered zombies (and were slaughtered by zombies) for hours and the conversations they had were, well, _interesting_.

Derek had been majoring in history, Stiles found out one afternoon, up at NYU. He didn't like Nutella, which was ridiculous, but he knew all the words to song One Week by Barenaked Ladies, which was a supernatural feat in of itself. It wasn't long before Stiles realized that he had been right, that first day in his bedroom; Derek Hale was actually a person that he, Stiles Stilinski, could like. (Actually, he did like him, a _lot_. It was absolutely the worst thing that had ever happened to Stiles, because Derek Hale had a sense of humor that made him snort soda up his nose and choke on chips and that made the werewolf smile at him and that was the worst sight Stiles had ever seen, hands down, because it was highly unfair.

Stiles Stilinski was not going to crush on Derek Hale. Derek Hale wasn't even _attractive_, he thought hysterically one day, after Derek had literally _whooped with glee_ upon receiving the gun he had been hoping for from the Box on their seventh round of zombies that day.

Not. Attractive. At. All.)

But they didn't just talk about personal things. (They actually didn't talk about personal things most of the time, which didn't explain why Stiles knew that Derek had wanted to play baseball when he was young, but he did, what the fuck?) They talked about supernatural things, like what Derek had been taught as a child growing up, about what they were going to do if Gerard came back. They talked about the possibility (eventuality) of Peter stabbing them in the back since he was alive again (seriously, _what the fuck_) and if it would really be a tragedy if Lydia went ahead and did them all the favor of putting him back in the ground for good. They talked about bringing Danny into the fold (which they did, huzzah, though it turned out he had been beginning to believe that they had been starting a freaky sex cult, which Stiles would really like to have explained again, in small words, please and thank you) and even about what they would do if (when) Stiles' dad found out about everything.

Mostly they talked about pack and killed zombies and just kind of lived. End of the year exams came up and Stiles' studied and passed (hah, take _that_ Harris!) and then it was summer break. Which meant Scott was chilling out on Stiles' bed, reaching for his phone and then sighing, retracting his hand and doing the whole damn process over again five minutes later.

"Dude," Stiles said, after the whole thing stopped being slightly sadistically amusing and started being absolutely fucking pathetic. "She's in _France_. Let her go, man."

Scott sighed, rolled onto his face, and then sighed again. "I know," he muttered into the bedspread. "I just…"

It was Stiles' turn to sigh loudly. "I know, man, I get it. Want to shoot zombies?"

Scott shook his head. Stiles tapped out a lopsided rhythm on the corner of his desk, eyes scanning the room for ideas. They landed on a box shoved into the bottom shelf of his bookcase, which was black and white. It had been a Christmas present from Scott, back before this mess had started. They hadn't played it, because it had just been the two of them, quite honestly, and no card game was any fun with two people, but now…

Stiles hopped up from his desk chair and scooped up his phone, flicking through the contacts to his most recent with practiced ease. "Don't worry, buddy," he said, patting Scott's floppy hair reassuringly. "I think I have an idea."

It was a testament to their friendship that Scott's distressed and terrified whimpers were heard all the way down the hall, Stiles thought fondly as he went off to find his dad. It was kind of funny and insulting all at once, though, that he wasn't even questioned. What was the use of brilliance if no one wanted to know your evil plans?

Three hours later (after an awkward conversation with his dad, a mass text that quickly devolved into innuendo and a speed cleaning of their living room) his plan was in full swing. And it was actually kind of awesome, if he did say so himself.

"Rumor has it that Vladimir Putin's favorite delicacy is BLANK stuffed with BLANK. Alright, suckers, dish 'em out!"

Boyd sighed heavily, like the entire premise of this game was so far beneath him that you would need a microscope to see it. Which was a lie, flat out and bold faced, because his fucking pile of won cards was like twice the size of Stiles' own. But whatever, Boyd could pretend to be a buzz kill all he wanted; he was still the first one to place down his pair of cards on the floor. Erica eyed him, just this side of gleeful, and then scanned the rest of the group, eyes like a vulture.

Stiles dug through his hand, fishing out the two cards he thought would work best (_used panties_ and _a sausage festival_, oh god he loved this fucking _game_) and then freezing. "Which one goes on the bottom," he asked, for possibly the third time that game.

"Jesus Christ, it isn't that hard, Stilinski," Jackson griped. He slapped down his cards and looked inordinately pleased with himself. Stiles ignored him, because his pile of won cards was itty bitty compared to his own. Hah. Suck _that_, Jackson.

"Put the one you want in the first blank on bottom," Danny clarified patiently, because Danny was great. He was also the only one who hadn't played a "Hell card" yet, so Stiles was a little wary of him. Nobody could make it through this came without getting a first class ticket to Hell, the internet had told him so. There was a reason this was so popular and it was because everyone who played was _sick_. He had been laughing along with the rest of them, however, so he was forgiven.

"Is that everyone," Erica demanded hotly. She reached for the cards without waiting for an answer and Scott, brave, stupid, puppy faced Scott, slapped her hand out of the way with a yelp.

"Wait, I'm still deciding!"

"Scott, don't slap Erica or you'll lose a finger," Derek said dryly. And then, without missing a beat, "Erica, don't claw Scott, it's not his fault his IQ is only three times his age." Stiles snorted and Derek flashed him a grin and, with much more dramatic flair than absolutely necessary, Scott slapped down his two cards on top of the pile.

And then promptly won, the fucking _bastard_.

"Children on leashes," Isaac read, eyes wide and cheeks pink with something like horror and awe rolled into one. "_Middle aged men in roller skates?!"_

"Yes," Erica repeated firmly. "Rumor has it that Vladimir Putin's favorite delicacy is children on leashes stuffed with a middle-aged man on roller skates."

Lydia sniffed delicately, like the thought offended her. Which was fucking rich, coming from the one who put down _doin' it in the butt_ and _the token minority_. But Stiles didn't call her out on it, because she was likely to claw his face off about it and he rather liked his face. All the bruising was gone and, in his esteemed opinion, his was a very good face. Not as good as Lydia's own or even Derek's (though he would keep that opinion to himself until the next time he could outrageously drunk with Scott and fuck, that wasn't a good idea, he just wasn't going to get drunk ever again, Scott could never know about this) but it was his and he liked it.

"Next," he prodded, gleeful, and Lydia dutifully reached out and pulled out their next Cards Against Humanity topic. Her face twisted, like she was trying to decide if she was horrified yet or not, and then she seemed to resign herself to the fact that this was her life now.

"What will always get you laid," she read aloud and immediately Isaac and Jackson lunged forward, slapping their cards onto the hard wood floor with gusto. She eyed them both critically, like there was some kind of mathematical equation she could use to figure out which one of them was more likely to win her approval. Derek was the next to slip his card into their pile and Stiles dragged his eyes away from the crooked smile that was tucked into the corner of the older man's mouth so that he could figure out what to put down. He tossed his down in a flurry, knocking elbows with Scott when he reached around him for a slice of pizza from the box beside the television. The other boy grinned at him and Stiles felt a warmth spread throughout his chest.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," Lydia counted off, scooping the cards and straightening them until they were all face up. She cleared her throat and then repeated the subject card before dramatically flipping over the first card. Immediately her mouth twisted, the bastard child of a grin and a frown on her glossy perfect lips.

It was one of the most human expressions Stiles had ever seen on her face and it put a little thrill through him to have put that there, even if he was (mostly) sure he wasn't in love with her anymore.

"The violation of our most basic human rights," Lydia read aloud. Her tone ended up sounding both skeptical and impressed. And that was indeed Stiles' card, because, hey, it was awful and totally not PC but it was true. It wasn't even the worst card he had placed down with the last twenty minutes, to be honest. Derek snorted, the sound catching in the back of his throat and when Stiles looked up he found the man with one hand clasped over his lips, the other clutching a can of Coke like it would cause world peace.

_I made Derek Hale snort Coca-Cola up his nose_, Stiles thought. He didn't even try not to be ridiculously pleased with that achievement. Because it was _Derek Hale_ snorting _soda_ up his _nose._ Two months ago he had barely been sure the guy was actually, y'know, _not a robot_. This was a fucking Christmas miracle.

Scott erupted suddenly with the kind of gut wrenching laughter that had once caused him to vomit mac 'n' cheese, his body tipping to the side and landing mostly in Isaac's lap. Isaac didn't looked bothered at all by this, which would have been slightly suspicious except for the fact that Stiles had purposefully resolved to never get in the way of one of Scott's relationships ever again and he actually thought Isaac was pretty cool, so whatever. He glanced to the ground where the card had been flipped over and promptly squealed.

_Incest_, the card Lydia had just been put down read. Stiles crammed his pizza slice in his mouth and tried not to choke on it too much.

"We're going to Hell," he sing-songed around the greasy piece of pepperoni. Scott was making little hitching sobbing noises into Isaac's thigh, his shoulders jerking up and down like a rag doll on a trampoline. His face was turning red and blotchy and actual fucking tears were coming down his face, he was laughing so hard.

Erica, who Stiles suspected had put down the incest card, beamed like a fucking lighthouse. "I love this game," she sighed happily, slouching back into the couch and tossing her legs across Boyd's knee. For the first time since she had been turned her shoulders were relaxed and her body language was comfortable instead of wound overly tight like a severely abused Jack in the Box. Stiles suspected she wasn't fully recovered from the whole kidnapped-by-crazy-fucking-alphas ordeal, but whatever, this was it was obviously a step in the right direction.

"You all are deeply disturbed children," Peter informed them from the arm chair across the room. Stiles wasn't quite sure why he was there, but for the most part he seemed content to sit and make unhelpful comments. Lydia alternated between glaring him into submission and pretending he didn't exist and despite his deep distrust Stiles found he didn't actually mind the undead man's commentary. (Actually, he was kind of honestly hilarious. Like, Stiles could see who Derek got his sense of humor from and wasn't that just _awful_. He was comforted by the knowledge that he and Derek had discussed, in detail, what they would do if Peter got too shady, so it wasn't like he had to worry about where the alpha stood on killing his uncle (again) which was, y'know, just so messed up, god, what was his life again?)

"You are all tasteless monkeys," Lydia informed them dryly. She tapped the last card in the selection with a perfectly purple painted nail and groans echoed around the circle as the losers of this round fell back.

_Taking advice from an wise, old black man_, the card read. And, _excuse me_, what _even_? But then Derek lunged forward, grinning like a fucking loon as he snatched up the subject card like someone was going to try and steal it from him. His hair was ten different kinds of wild, having temporarily been dragged into an impromptu pillow fight death match to see who would get to judge first and Stiles got a little bit distracted by the way his two front teeth were just a little bit too big when he grinned like that.

"How," Stiles wondered aloud, feeling the need to put up a fight. Derek just flipped him off and dropped the card neatly (and proudly) into his pile of won subjects. His pile was the biggest in the entire circle, which was just _unfair_. Stiles tried not to find that attractive as fuck and failed horrible. Inappropriate, wry, dark humor was a thing that did it for him, okay? It wasn't his _fault_, it was just _so hot_. Ugh.

"Scott," Jackson shouted. He was grinning when he kicked out, catching the still sputtering boy in the knee. "Get the hell up, Isaac's got to judge next, asshole!" This caused a slight scuffle between the two boys before Boyd sighed loudly, pushing the two back to their own spots in the circle.

"I regret my decision to take the bite," the large teenager informed the circle balefully.

Stiles didn't need werewolf sense to know that was a lie. He threw his head back and laughed and when he straightened back up he found Derek smiling at him, small and absolutely gorgeous and shit.

"Why am I sticky?" Isaac read aloud, dragging Stiles attention from their alpha's mouth (which was good, thank god for Isaac, the last thing he needed to do surrounded by werewolves (and Peter in general) with super senses was pop a goddamn boner) and to the game that was still going on. And _fuck_, he had the absolutely fucking best card for this, _hell yes_.

And that was, long story short, how it was all Derek Hale's fault that the Sheriff came home to find his home invaded by teenagers, one twenty one year old and one creepy sassy uncle.


End file.
